- Viola organista
The viola organista was a musical instrument invented by
Leonardo da Vinci . It was the first bowed keyboard instrument (of which any record has survived) ever to be devised.Leonardo's original idea, as preserved in his notebooks of
1488 –1489 and in the drawings in theCodex Atlanticus , was to use one or more wheels, continuously rotating, each of which pulled a looping bow, rather like a fanbelt in an automobile engine, and perpendicular to the instrument's strings. The strings would be pushed downward into the bow by the action of the keys, causing the moving bow to sound the pitch of the string. In one design, the strings were fretted with tangents, so that there were more keys than strings (several notes, for example C and C#, would all be played on one string). In another design each note had its own string.Apparently Leonardo did not build his instrument. The first similar instrument actually to be constructed was the "Geigenwerk" of 1575 by
Hans Haiden , a German instrument inventor.A modern reconstruction of the viola organista by Akio Obuchi was used in a concert in
Genoa ,Italy in2004 .ources and further reading
*Carolyn W. Simons, "Sostenente piano", and Emanuel Winternitz and Laurence Libin, "Leonardo da Vinci," Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed April 2, 2005 at www.grovemusic.com), [http://www.grovemusic.com (subscription access)]
*"Sostenente piano", "The New Harvard Dictionary of Music", ed. Don Randel. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1986. ISBN 0-674-61525-5External links
* [http://homepage1.nifty.com/obuchi/index-e.htm Akio Obuchi's reconstruction] as used in
Genoa
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